It is mostly about stories on the Korean people’s struggles against the U. S. bases in Korea. Hope many of you find some clues and sources here. Please just be kind and fair to the source.많은 분들께서 여기에서 단서들과 자료들을 찾길 바랍니다. 다만 단서와 자료의 기원에 대해 친절하고 공정하게 표기해 주시면 감사하겠읍니다.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The banner says, " Press Interview upon the Visit of James Steinberg, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State:Obama administration, immediately begin the talk with the North Korea!"Sept. 30, 2009, in front of the Department of the Foreign Trade.The small boards in Korean say, "Stop the dual play of the Sanction & Talk, now!", " Stop the parallel play of Sanction and Talk, gun-pointing and handshaking!"

SEOUL, Sept. 30 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said Wednesday that his country is in sync with South Korea on a "comprehensive approach" to North Korea's denuclearization and is willing to improve relations with Pyongyang if it takes irreversible steps to dismantle its nuclear program.

Steinberg, on a trip here as part of an Asia tour, stressed a need to break the vicious cycle of North Korea reaching a nuclear deal, reneging on it, and returning to provocative behavior.

"What we all agree is that we've lived through the history before of partial measures and reversible measures. What we need is a comprehensive and definitive resolution of the nuclear question," the U.S. diplomat said. "And in that context, as we've said in the 2005 joint statement, we are prepared to make significant improvements in our relationships with North Korea," he told reporters after a series of meetings with Prime Minister Chung Un-chan, Vice Foreign Minister Kwon Jong-rak, presidential security adviser Kim Sung-hwan, and chief nuclear negotiator Wi Sung-lac.

"But it requires a comprehensive and definitive approach. I think that is what President Lee Myung-bak is talking about, that's what we're talking about. I think we are absolutely in sync on this," he added.

Delivering a speech in New York earlier this month, Lee put forward a "grand bargain" proposal that the North be granted a comprehensive package of incentives including security guarantees if it dismantles the key parts of its nuclear program in an irreversible way.

The proposal targets getting to the North's nuclear weapons and materials, Lee's aides have said, even if it takes more time in producing a deal.

U.S. officials were initially lukewarm in their reaction, raising questions about whether the allies had held adequate consultations on the issue. Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state, has said small measures could be necessary at times in handling the nuclear problem.

Steinberg at the same time reaffirmed Washington's willingness for dialogue with Pyongyang.

"I think there is a tremendous opportunity now for them to take a constructive measure. They've certainly given some indication that they understand the value of re-engagement and we would like to see them take advantage of it," he said.

The U.S. earlier said it will hold a bilateral meeting with the North but would focus on coaxing the communist state back to the six-way nuclear talks where actual negotiations should take place.

Steinberg is scheduled to leave for Tokyo, the last leg of his five-nation tour, later Thursday. He also traveled to Malaysia, Vietnam, and China.

South Korea will spend about 1.5 trillion won (about $1.3 billion) on its second generation space rocket, after the joint Russian-Korean-made first generation vehicle failed to deliver its payload satellite into orbit last month.

The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), the country's space agency, expects to complete the development of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle II (KSLV-II) by 2017, when it is to blast off from the Naro Space Center in South Jeolla Province to send a 1.5-kilometer satellite into orbit.

The funding has been included in next year's budget, KARI officials said. The KSLV-II will be the successor of KSLV-1, which was launched at the Naro Space Center on Aug. 25.

Russia's Khrunichev State Space Science and Production Center provided technology for the Korean rocket project, and developed the first stage of the KSLV-1, including the rocket engine and liquid-fuel propulsion system.

KARI built the second-stage of the rocket that was designed to hold the satellite jointly developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST).

Although the rocket reached its desired speed and height on its Aug. 25 launch, a malfunction of the KARI-built second stage prevented the satellite from being released properly. The satellite was likely burned and destroyed in the atmosphere as it crashed back to Earth.

The government is currently investigating technical problems related to the failure and will announce the results by the end of next month. The Khrunichev Center will prepare a second launch next May, and is also contracted for a third launch should the second attempt fail.

Although the KSLV-1 project garnered rapt attention, KSLV-II will represent a truer test of the ingenuity of Korea's rocket technology. KARI is planning to rely almost entirely on new technology to make the second rocket.

"Gaining experience on liquid-fuel engines from the KSLV-1 has been critical. We are close to completing a rocket engine with 75 tons of thrust, and we expect to improve on that," said a KARI official, who said that the KSLV-II will be about "90-percent homemade" in terms of components usage.

Unlike the two-stage KSLV-I, the KSLV-II will be a three-stage rocket measuring 50 meters in height and 3 meters in diameter. The first stage of the rocket will have four liquid-fuel rocket engines, each providing around 75 to 80 tons of thrust.

Another rocket engine with similar power will be installed on the second-stage of the rocket, while the third-stage, which will carry the satellite, will have a pressure-fed rocket engine generating about 5 tons of thrust.

The KSLV-II will be used to send a 1.5-kilogram satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of somewhere between 600 to 800 kilometers.

The 1.5 trillion won government funding will be spent on designing, building and testing the rocket systems, developing advanced rocket engines, constructing rocket testing facilities and launch equipment, and conducting flight tests.

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Park Gil-yon told the U.N. General Assembly Monday that the key to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula was whether Washington was prepared to change its nuclear policy toward Pyongyang, according to AFP.

"The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula depends on whether or not the U.S. changes its nuclear policy toward Korea," he noted. "The U.S. administration must discard old concept of confrontation and show the 'change' in practice, as it recently stated on several occasions."

Park added that Pyongyang "has done everything it could to realize the peaceful reunification of the country, remove nuclear threats and source of war and secure peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula."

"We initiated the denuclearization of Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula and advanced the proposal on replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement and the proposal of adopting the DPRK (North Korea)-U.S. non-aggression treaty," he noted.

But Park complained that Pyongyang's gesture "has not received due response" from the United States, "which considers the Korean issue only in the light of its Asian strategy and does not want to see the entire Korean peninsula denuclearized."

He also slammed Western countries which are "selectively taking issue with the peaceful satellite launch" by North Korea.

Park also rejected U.N. Security Council sanctions slapped on his country, accusing the 15-member council of becoming "more arrogant, resulting in further inequality and prevalent double standards in international relations."

In April, North Korea quit six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons program after the Security Council censured its long-range rocket test.

After North Korea conducted its second nuclear test in May, the Council adopted a resolution slapping financial and commercial sanctions and extending an arms embargo on North Korea by requiring member states to inspect suspicious cargoes.

Last night nearly 30 peaceniks attended the joint meeting of the Brunswick Town Council and the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority (MRRA). The MRRA has been tasked by the state with the responsibility to plan for what will happen at the local Naval Air Station after it closes in 2011.

At the beginning of the meeting one town councillor said she had never seen so many people at one of their meetings since she began serving on the council. Most of those in the packed audience had come because of the flurry of news articles and letters to the editor in the local paper about using the base as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Flight Test Center.

One of the first things that was stated by the leadership of the MRRA was that the town council would have no authority over any decisions made by the redevelopment agency. The members of the MRRA are all appointed by the governor and as one member told the audience, "We are appointed for four-year terms and have no constituency."

Yeah, right.

Again the MRRA, sensing that there was deep concern in the audience about the drone issue, launched a preemptive strike when one member declared, "UAV's are consistent with our aviation feasibility study" that recommends "aviation and aerospace" as potential uses of the closing base.

In my words to the town council and MRRA I shared conclusions from a recent study by three UAV experts to the Welsh government where they suggest that drones testing is not safe.

I said: Airworthiness standards are insufficiently mature to allow their use over populated areas; the need for segregated airspace for drone testing will impact civilian air operations; they will invade our privacy because they are outfitted with surveillance cameras and there will be no real controls over who gets the information; they will pollute and make unwanted noise; AND PROBABLY MOST IMPORTANTLY because of intermittent communication and loss of contact arising from terrain shielding and the absence of on-board pilots to deal with emergency situationsthey will not be immune to crashes – it would be like your cell phone temporarily being out of reception range, drones fly by receiving radio signals from satellites; termination of flights will not be controllable.

In the last month two UAV's crashed in Iraq and one crashed in Wales.

Several other strong presentations were also made that appealed to these two government bodies to create a positive sustainable presence at the closing base. One speaker, reminding the MRRA that they had just said the redevelopment plans included a world-class resort hotel and two different college facilities, questioned the logic of having drones buzzing around these heavily populated institutions. That one drew a hearty laugh from the assembled.

After a while the council chair tired of hearing from the great unwashed in the audience and determined that no one else wanting to talk about drones (at this advertised public hearing) could speak. Only local residents with something else to say (and obviously more important) should address the be-knighted, she concluded. That didn't work out well as still a couple more anti-droners took to the podium.

We got a spirited lecture from John Richardson, former speaker of the Maine House of Representatives who now sits on the MRRA board. He was appointed by the governor as his Commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development. Mr. Richardson did a long bloviation about how he opposed the war in Iraq and led the effort to have the Maine House pass a resolution against it. Very commendable.

But then Mr. Richardson, and MRRA Executive Director Steve Levesque, launched their final strike against us by saying that at this time there was really no issue about drones. There was no need for concern, they warned. At this time there were "no proposals" to use the base as a drone flight test center.

Of course these guys think we just fell off the back of the pumpkin delivery truck. It was like listening to Bill Clinton give a definition of what "is" is.

My reaction to all this? Why, if there would ultimately be no plans for drone testing in Brunswick, did Mr. Richardson feel the slightest need to tell the local newspaper on September 1, "There are many adaptive uses of UAVs that could be very helpful to the nation and then the world. I wouldn't cast out of hand UAV research or testing, because of the potential benefits to the nation in the areas of search and rescue, air and water quality, homeland security and even forest fire prevention."

Some people will do and say anything to make a buck.

Tonight I drive south to Portland to attend a meeting of the Maine State Rail Plan Technical Advisory Committee. In my early years as an organizer I co-founded a group called the Peoples Transit Organization in Orlando, Florida that fought against more and wider road building and instead pushed for bus expansion and construction of light rail in the community. One of our first acts was to suggest to the City Council of Orlando that they put a free trolley line in the downtown area. They laughed us out the door. Last time I visited Orlando I saw a free trolley line carrying folks from one end of downtown to the other.

It would be great if tonight, instead of driving to Portland, I could take a light-rail line just like the one in the video above now being used in San Diego, California. It could be built at Bath Iron Works or at a new facility on the grounds of the closing Brunswick Naval Air Station. Research shows that more jobs would be created for local workers than we will get from testing drones or building Aegis destroyers in our community.

But sadly these ideas were not very welcome last night. The MRRA and their courtiers have their own plans afoot - and remember, they are beholden to no one.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

* Bruce Gagnon blogMonday, September 28, 2009THE OTHER SECRET NUKE PROGRAM IN THE MIDDLE EAST

There is a secret nuclear facility in the Middle East producing plutonium which has the capacity to make 10 nuclear warheads a year.

It is Israel's ongoing nuclear weapons production that drives the nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Saddam wanted a bomb because Israel had one. The Iranians were then worried both about an Iraqi and an Israeli bomb. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others are annoyed at their geostrategic helplessness in the face of Israeli nukes.

Isn't it more than interesting that no one in the US political class ever talks about the nukes in Israel. And Israel refuses to sign the UN's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Please note that no American politicians are suggesting that Israel should allow international inspections of their nuclear facilities or that they should be bombed for remaining secret.

Peace groups internationally are putting the pressure on President Obama this fall, as he ponders the request from Gen. McChrystal for a “surge” troop escalation in Afghanistan. Thankfully, leading Democrats and even former President Clinton are urging caution, though few are taking the wiser step of recommending a pullout. But there is an additional decision Obama must make, one which the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space sees as a fundamental issue in the upcoming Keep Space for Peace Week.

As soon as CIA Director Leon Panetta was appointed in an acting role to his post, he asked Obama for a significant escalation in armed “drone” flights, utilizing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), over both Afghanistan and Pakistan. These robot planes are flown by ground-based pilots, either in-country or even in the United States, using space as the navigational medium. The UAVs can accurately send bombs to pinpoint locations, though this does not mean there is no “collateral damage” in terms of civilian human casualties.

The Global Network wants to remind people that standoff war using robotic technology is neither surgical, nor antiseptic, nor moral. It can be appealing to the White House and to the American public, because it is allows nearly infinite kill ratios – thousands of so-called adversaries can be killed with very little chance of U.S. casualties. With no American soldiers coming home in body bags, few U.S. citizens care about anything else.

Yet turning the Afghanistan-Pakistan war into a UAV turkey-shoot is little different from the assassination squads approved by former Vice President Dick Cheney. In fact, it is no accident that, on two successive days, the New York Times reported on Blackwater (now Xe) being assigned to Cheney’s death-squad team, and the same Blackwater group being used for outsourcing of armed UAV flights. One method of killing is being used to replace the other.

Not so long ago, UAV pilots used joysticks to control UAVs, emulating a video game. Now they use Google Earth on touch screens to point to a location they want a robot plane to bomb. Within a year, those Google Earth applications will be available for special iPhones and Blackberries made for U.S. troops. And all those means of delivering death use space. Many of the war-fighter tools that are employed from space also take advantage of the Pentagon’s new cyber-warrior tools, which have culminated in the establishment of a dedicated Cyber Command to control computer networks here and abroad.

Moral review of space policy is ruled out because the critic can never have access to the “secret information” needed for evaluation. Hiding the truth from the enemy means hiding it from the public. Real public discourse cannot happen, either, because the body politic cannot be trusted with all the facts.

The Global Network has had reason to see optimism in recent months: No true weapon in space has yet been fielded by any nation. Obama has canceled planned missile-defense ground-based components in Poland and the Czech Republic. The world’s leaders are pledging to work harder to banish nuclear weapons. And Obama has called for a review of the October 2006 National Space Policy that calls for virtual U.S. “ownership” of orbital space.

But like so many national-security realms where Obama has taken tentative half-steps, the struggle for peace in space is far from over. The U.S. military remains by far the largest user of orbital space. Its satellites for intelligence, communications, and navigation remain the key enabling components that allow the U.S. and its allies to conduct war. And Obama’s new sea-based missile-defense plans allow a more provocative stance in challenging the nations like Iran and North Korea that are trying to foil global management plans.

For Keep Space for Peace Week, we urge activists throughout the world to examine closely the claims for “sanitizing” warfare. We urge citizens to not be swayed into thinking that a war allowing more invisible means of killing others is somehow one that can be accepted better than bloody battles on the ground. Space is the ultimate commons, and no one has the right to dominate the planet through unilateral control.

A broader joint air operations command of South Korean and U.S. Air Forces is being set up here in tandem with the planned transition of wartime operational control (OPCON) in 2012, a military source said Sunday.

The Hardened Theater of Air Control Center (HTACC), the Korea-U.S. combined air operations command led by a three-star American general at Osan Air Base, has been working to expand its roles and missions after being renamed the Korea Air and Space Operations Center (KAOC), the source said on condition of anonymity.

The Master Control and Reporting Center (MCRC), a computer system to monitor and track aircraft on a real-time basis, at the KAOC is also receiving upgrades, he said.

"KAOC will be developed further to serve as an integrated joint air force command of the two allies on the peninsula by 2012, effectively orchestrating all operations of the two air forces in the case of an emergency," the source said.

The U.S.-led Combined Forces Command (CFC) is to hand over almost all operations authority on the peninsula to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in 2012 before being deactivated.

But the U.S. military will still lead air operations after the transformation to take advantage of its dominant aerial assets against North Korea in time of war.

The command will manage and direct operations conducted both by South Korean forward and rear area air operations headquarters, he said.

Under the Defense Reform 2020 plan, the Air Force, which currently operates a rear area air combat command in Daegu, about 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, plans to launch a forward area air combat command in Osan next year.

"Work to build facilities of the new forward area command is underway in Osan," an Air Force official said. "In a bid to help boost interoperability, a liaison office from the rear area command may also be opened at the Osan base."

A U.S. military source expressed confidence in joint air operations by both commands, saying, "Each U.S. officer in KAOC has a Korean counterpart and all communications and briefings are delivered in both English and Korean. This close partnership is vital to the security of Korea."

How to map out a new command structure of the South Korean and U.S. Air Forces on the peninsula has been a key topic of the 2012 command rearrangement procedures, as the U.S. military pledged to shift its roles and missions to air- and naval-centric ones while reducing the number of ground troops.

In February, U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Walter Sharp, who also serves as chief of the CFC, unveiled a plan to launch a U.S.-led combined theater air operations command in Osanby 2012.

As for criticism that a U.S. commander will still be in charge of joint air operations even after the 2012 transition, Gen. Lee Sang-eui, nomine for JCS chairman, said the authority to command and control joint air operations will, in fact, be in the hands of South Korea, given the JCS chief will eventually have the highest decision-making power for all wartime operations.

I had a wonderful day yesterday at the Common Ground Fair just outside of Unity, Maine. The weather was a perfect fall day, sunny and cool, and the crowds were enormous - likely in the tens of thousands.

I worked for several hours at the Veterans for Peace table gathering signatures on the petition opposing the plan to create an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight test center (the drone zone the local paper calls it) in nearby Brunswick. Under another of the huge tents the Peace Action Maine table was doing the same thing so between us we reached many people on the topic.

At 2:00 pm about 15 fellow peace activists from around the state gathered by one of the fair entrances where we dressed ourselves in black capes and put on white masks. We hung big black sandwich-board signs over our shoulders that in white letters raised the issues of endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two of us with drums, one in front and the other near the rear, pounded a slow and steady heartbeat as we walked throughout the huge fairgrounds for more than 30 minutes in a solemn single-file. The crowds would stop what they were doing and watch us though many more than we would have expected at such a "progressive" fair stood with blank stares on their faces. Of course we received many positive messages too but following our second time around the fair, after we had removed our costumes, all those participating agreed that many people in the public are in emotional shutdown.

It reminds me of the book called Art of Loving by Eric Fromm. He told the story about pre-Nazi Germany where psychology students went out onto the streets and queried the public about their reasons for virtually ignoring the warning signs of a coming fascism. The students found that the public did not want to think about it nor did they wish to act.

To have faith means to dare, to think the unthinkable, yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible; it is the paradoxical hope to expect the Messiah every day, yet not to lose heart when he has not come at the appointed hour. This hope is not passive and it is not patient; on the contrary, it is impatient and active, looking for every possibility of action within the realm of real possibilities. Least of all it is passive as far as the growth and liberation of one's own person are concerned....The situation of mankind is too serious to permit us to listen to the demagogues - least of all demagogues who are attracted to destruction - or even to the leaders who use only their brains and whose hearts have hardened. Critical and radical thought will only bear fruit when it is blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with - the love of life.

At about 4:00 pm yesterday Maine Veterans for Peace president Dud Hendrick and I did a one-hour talk with about 25 people under one of the small workshop tents provided by the fair. We spoke about the growing US military empire and told some stories about how US bases in places like Diego Garcia, Marshall Islands, Greenland, and South Korea have stolen land from the peoples of those countries. We asked why the American people are not more engaged about the many thefts that result when one nation builds an empire?

My bottom line message was conversion, beating the swords into plowshares, and the need for all of us to find ways in our everyday lives to enflesh, to give life, to that demand if we hope to successfully bring home the empire.

Hundreds of Koreans Saturday had tearful reunions with relatives they had not seen for almost 60 years, as a South-North humanitarian program resumed after a two-year hiatus.

Sobbing relatives hugged each other tight, mostly speechless with emotion as the reunions at the North's Mt. Geumgang resort near the inter-Korean border were shown on a South Korean TV, according to AFP.

Tears that had been held back for almost 60 years streamed down the face of Kim Hye-kyong, 83, who met her daughter for the first time since they were separated during the Korean war, AFP said.

"I have been always feeling guilty since I left you when you were only three years old," Hye-kyong was quoted as telling her daughter.

"Don't worry mother. I am well off here," the daughter replied calmly, holding her mother's hands in her palms.

Hye-kyong brought her daughter a traditional Korean costume called hanbok that she had made herself.

Noh Sun-ho, a 50-year-old woman, was reunited with her brother, Noh Sung-ho, whose fishing boat and 11 other colleagues were captured by a North Korean patrol boat near the inter-Korean border in 1987.

Tearfully, they hugged tight. "I've been missing you so much," Sun-ho said. "After coming to the North, I've been living quite well. I got a decent job in Pyongyang. Those who knew me in the South wouldn't believe that I was even sent to a college (by the North Korean government)," the brother said.

His North Korean wife said Sung-ho is now a "proud" member of the North's ruling communist party.

Lee Kwe-suk, 79, was conscripted into the South Korean army during the Korean War and listed as killed in action before he was recently found alive in the North.

"I failed to be a filial son for my parents but I always miss them so much," Kwe-suk said after he met a South Korean brother who told him that their parents have already passed away.

"I'm so overwhelmed by emotions. I cannot even shed tears," Kwe-suk said.

Earlier on Saturday, a group of 97 elderly South Koreans, including eight in their 90s and 52 octogenarians, drove through the heavily fortified inter-Korean border toward the Mt. Geumgang resort on the North's east coast.

A total of 100 South Koreans were chosen for the reunion program but three pulled out at the last moment for health reasons. The reunion program had been suspended for two years as ties between Pyongyang and Seoul's conservative government deteriorated. The communist state has agreed to resume them as part of a series of recent peace overtures.For three days starting Saturday afternoon, the 97 South Koreans will be reunited with their 240 relatives in the North who were found to be still alive and able to travel.

In the second stage of the event, 99 North Koreans will be reunited with 449 relatives living in the South from Sept. 29 through Oct. 1.

Synchronized announcements on September 17 by President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the U.S. was abandoning plans to station interceptor missiles in Poland and a forward-based missile radar site in the Czech Republic are now ten days ago and information surfacing in the interim indicates that its new plans are more far-reaching than their predecessor.

Two days after the statements by the American president and defense chief the latter, Pentagon head Robert Gates, was granted a column in the New York Times.

The most representative segment of Gates’ comments is arguably this:

“I have been a strong supporter of missile defense ever since President Ronald Reagan first proposed it in 1983. But I want to have real capacity as soon as possible, and to take maximum advantage of new technologies….American missile defense on the continent will continue, and not just in Central Europe, the most likely location for future SM-3 sites, but, we hope, in other NATO countries as well….We are strengthening – not scrapping – missile defense in Europe.” [1]

Remarking that the earlier-envisioned system in Poland and the Czech Republic would not have been operative until 2015 and that opposition among both nations’ parliamentarians would have delayed the process at least another two years, Gates evinced both impatience with and far grander designs for the European wing of the U.S.’s global missile shield program by asserting, “President Obama…decided to discard that plan in favor of a vastly more suitable approach. In the first phase, to be completed by 2011, we will deploy proven, sea-based SM-3 interceptor missiles – weapons that are growing in capability….”

The new deployments, which will be examined in depth later, are to be more mobile and less capable of being anticipated and defended against; will be implemented, according to Gates’ own schedule, at least eight years ahead of the prior plan’s timeline; and will extend worldwide missile interceptor networks into far broader swathes of Eurasia, the Middle East and ultimately the planet as a whole.

Even in the first phase of the adapted – advanced – system that Gates first described on September 17, more developed technologies are to supplant what are already outdated ones that would have been applied to the Polish and Czech deployments. “[A] fixed radar site like the one previously envisioned for the Czech Republic would be far less adaptable than the airborne, space- and ground-based sensors we now plan to use.”

The new system, in addition to being more effective and quickly operationalized, will be much grander in scope and will include several times as many missiles as those intended for Poland, although that nation will still host different variants of medium-range interceptor missiles and, as Gates states below, will still eventually station long-range ground-based missiles.

“The second phase, which will become operational around 2015, will involve putting upgraded SM-3s [Standard Missile-3s] on the ground in Southern and Central Europe. All told, every phase of this plan will include scores of SM-3 missiles, as opposed to the old plan of just 10 ground-based interceptors….[O]ur military will continue research and development on a two-stage ground-based interceptor, the kind that was planned to be put in Poland, as a back-up.”

Scores means some multiple of twenty and one of America’s top military commanders has mentioned 100 as a starting point, as will be seen later.

SM-3s are the missiles employed by the U.S.’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System, which is a sea-based anti-ballistic missile interception program designed to be based off the coasts of targeted nations as needed to render ineffective those nations’ missile launch capabilities, both offensive and defensive.

They are also an integral component of the Pentagon’s Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a U.S.-led 90-nation international naval surveillance and interdiction project inaugurated by John Bolton in 2003 ostensibly to “interdict weapons of mass destruction” by confronting non-PSI nations’ vessels anywhere in the world.

SM-3s are also to be a staple item for America’s “thousand-ship navy,” first proposed by the then U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations Michael Mullen, now chairman of the armed forces Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In 2005 Mullen addressed the Seventeenth International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island and said “the United States Navy cannot, by itself, preserve the freedom and security of the entire maritime domain. It must count on assistance from like-minded nations interested in using the sea for lawful purposes and precluding its use for others that threaten national, regional, or global security.” [2]

Saturday, September 26, 2009

President Lee Myung-bak, left, shakes hand with Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper at Pittsburgh’s David L. Lawrence Convention Center after announcing an agreement to hold next year’s G20 summit in South Korea, Sept. 25. Canada will hold the G8 presidency and South Korea will hold the G20 presidency in 2010.

Our government has declared open war on our citizens - at least those of us who disagree with official policy. Peaceful protest in the US is now seen as a declaration of war by the corporate controlled government. They are telling us to submit to their authority......

* Image Source: same as below: 'The police arrest citizens who participated in the candlelight vigil demonstrations in Seoul Plaza primarily for violating Article 10 of the Assembly and Demonstration Law prohibiting assemblies and demonstrations after sunset, May 28, 2008.'

Civic and social groups are busily working toward a speedy amendment of the Assembly and Demonstration Law following a Constitutional Court ruling that found Article 10 forbidding outdoor assemblies at night unconstitutional. The court has given the National Assembly until June 2010 to revise the law.

These groups first plan to file notices of nighttime assemblies and then apply pressure on the police. “Given that the Constitutional Court has gone so far as to acknowledge the unconstitutionality of the measure forbidding nighttime assemblies, it remains possible for the police to make flexible determinations even if the law has not been amended yet,” said a representative of Minjunet, an organization made up of some 80 civic and social groups, including Jinbo Corea and the Solidarity of Human Rights Groups. “We plan to start filing nighttime assembly notices in earnest starting sometime around next weekend,” the representative added.

In particular, Jinbo Corea and other groups plan to start by filing formal reports for the “Candlelight Cultural Festival” currently being held at the site of the Yongsan tragedy in Hangang-no 2-ga in Seoul’s Yongsan district. If the police do not allow the nighttime assembly, the groups plan to respond actively by applying for emergency assistance measures from the National Human Rights Commission of Korea or by filing an administrative lawsuit with the courts.

The groups also plan to establish a legal foundation for nighttime assemblies during this regular session of the National Assembly in order to ramp up the speed of lawmakers’ activity toward the passage of an amendment to the Assembly and Demonstration Law. At present, some ten bills to amend the law remain pending in the National Assembly. Of these, legislation proposed by Lawmaker Kang Chang-il, Lawmaker Lee Jung-hee and Lawmaker Chun Jung-bae would allow nighttime assemblies.

“There is no reason to put off the business of legally guaranteeing the freedom of holding assemblies at night that have been confirmed as a Constitutional right,” said Whang Sun-won, head of Jinbo Corea’s Democracy and Human Rights Bureau, added that the group plans to strongly demand quick passage of an amendment by the National Assembly.

'Kwak Dong-ki, a unification movement activist, holds a press conference at the office of Korea Confederation of Trade Union to criticize the National Intelligence Service’s illegal phone taps, Aug. 31.'

HankyorehEmail communications interception on the rise in South Korea:NSS responsible for 706 interceptions of telephone and email communicationsPosted on : Sep.26,2009 15:24 KST

South Korea has seen in increase in the interception of communications. According to “The present condition of cooperation in communication interception during the first half of 2009” report submitted by the Korea Communication Commission to the National Assembly, communication interception during the first half of this year increased to 799 cases (one case contain several phone numbers) or by 34.4 percent compared to last year. The total number of all phone or email communications interceptions came to 6402.

When examined in detail, the National Security Service was responsible for ordering 706 communications interceptions or the majority of cases that took place during the first half of this year, compared to 562 cases during same period last year. In comparison, the Defense Security Command (DSC) was responsible for 23 cases from 8 cases last year, the police were responsible for 61 cases from 32 cases, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office was responsible for 9 cases from 6 cases.

In addition, the interception of email communications increased sharply to 489 cases from 356 cases last year, and the interception of wireless phone communications also increased to 310 cases from 252 cases.

SOKCHO, South Korea, Sept. 26 (Yonhap) -- A group of elderly South Koreans departed for North Korea on Saturday to be briefly reunited with their long-lost relatives there, the first such event in nearly two years.

Ninety-six South Koreans, 30 of them too frail to walk alone and accompanied by one family member each, headed to the Mount Kumgang resort on the North's east coast by bus, through the heavily-fortified demilitarized zone.

"It's been almost sixty years. I am happy and also confused," Kim Un-seon, 86, said. He was set to meet his son and daughter-in-law from the North's Hwanghae Province for the first time since leaving his home at the onset of the Korean War in 1950.

The elderly gathered in this eastern seaside town just south of the border on Friday. Four others, initially selected in the 100-member list, were unable to come because of their frail health, according to the National Red Cross of South Korea which set up the reunions with its North Korean counterpart. More than three-quarters of the participants are 70 or older.

The reunions are being held in two separate events. During the first three days, the South Koreans will be reunited with their 240 relatives in the North who were found to be still alive and able to travel. In the second segment of the event, 99 North Koreans will be reunited with 449 relatives living in the South.

South Korean Red Cross President Yoo Chong-ha traveled to the North with the South Korean families, and a meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Jang Jae-on, is expected during the earlier segment of the event.

About 600,000 people in the South are believed to have family in the North from whom they have been separated since the 1950-53 war. Candidates were first selected through a computer lottery, with the final lists being drawn from applicants whose relatives were located, giving priority to immediate family members and the elderly.

The humanitarian event was arranged after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il agreed last month to resume the reunions in a meeting with Hyun Jeong-eun, chairwoman of South Korea's Hyundai Group, a major investor in the North. The North has since followed up with a series of other conciliatory moves, such as lifting restrictions on a South Korean-run industrial park on its soil.

Political tensions mounted after the conservative government of President Lee Myung-bak came to power in the South last year. Lee toughened up on the North's nuclear drive and suspended massive aid, while North Korea boycotted dialogue and suspended the family reunions. The mood further chilled after a North Korean soldier in the Mount Kumgang resort area shot and killed a South Korean tourist who had strayed into an off-limits military zone in July last year.

About the Site

The site is managed by an artist living in the South Korea. The photo in the profile is the children in Osan, near the Pyeongtaek where the planned US military base hub in the north east Asia and a large US air base exists. They are the children of a teacher who manages the Children Peace School there. As a part of the class programs, the children in the class drew and wrote in a cloth, their wishes of the peaceful unification of Korea some day.